News: YouTube struck a major deal with MCPS-PRS Alliance, a British collecting society that represents 10 million musical works on behalf of their publishers or song writers. Under the deal, YouTube will pay a flat fee for use of the musical works on videos on YouTube by its users. Terms of the flat fee were not disclosed. (More)
Analysis: This is an incredibly important deal for YouTube to stave off more copyright lawsuits. Now it needs to do the same thing with all the U.S. music publishers suing it. As a business strategy, I find it hard to believe that YouTube would only strike this kind of deal with the UK music publishers. If YouTube is able to secure similar deals with the U.S. music publishers suing it and to settle their claims, the copyright lawsuits against YouTube would certainly become less worrisome (reducing the potential scope of liability).
